to treat or prepare by some particular series of actions, as in manufacturing.

11.

to handle (papers, records, etc.) by systematically organizing them, recording or making notations on them, following up with appropriate action, or the like:

to process mail.

12.

to require (someone) to answer questionnaires, perform various tasks, and sometimes to undergo physical and aptitude classification examinations before the beginning or termination of a period of service:

The army processes all personnel entering or leaving the service.

13.

to convert (an agricultural commodity) into marketable form by a special series of steps, as pasteurization.

1. operation. Process,procedure,proceeding apply to something that goes on or takes place. A process is a series of progressive and interdependent steps by which an end is attained: a chemical process.Procedure usually implies a formal or set order of doing a thing, a method of conducting affairs: parliamentary procedure.Proceeding (usually pl.) applies to what goes on or takes place on a given occasion or to the records of the occasion: Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Pronunciation note

The word process, an early 14th century French borrowing, has a regularly formed plural that adds -es to the singular. This plural, as in similar words like recesses and successes, has traditionally been pronounced

[-iz] /-ɪz/ (Show IPA)

[pros-es-iz, proh-ses-] /ˈprɒs ɛs ɪz, ˈproʊ sɛs-/ or

[pros-uh-siz, proh-suh-] /ˈprɒs ə sɪz, ˈproʊ sə-/ . Recent years have seen the increasing popularity of an

[-eez] /-ˌiz/ pronunciation for processes, perhaps by mistaken analogy with such plurals as theses and hypotheses, with which it has no connection. Although this newer pronunciation is increasingly common, it is regarded by some educated speakers as an affectation.

Meaning "course or method of action" is from mid-14c.; sense of "continuous series of actions meant to accomplish some result" (the main modern sense) is from 1620s. Legal sense of "course of action of a suit at law" is attested from early 14c.

v.

1530s, "begin legal action against," from Middle French processer "to prosecute," from proces (see process (n.)). Meaning "prepare by special process" is from 1881, from the noun in English. Of persons, "to register and examine," by 1935. Related: Processed; processing.

1. The sequence of states of an executing program. A process consists of the program code (which may be shared with other processes which are executing the same program), private data, and the state of the processor, particularly the values in its registers. It may have other associated resources such as a process identifier, open files, CPU time limits, shared memory, child processes, and signal handlers. One process may, on some platforms, consist of many threads. A multitaskingoperating system can run multiple processes concurrently or in parallel, and allows a process to spawn "child" processes. (2001-06-16) 2. The sequence of activities, people, and systems involved in carrying out some business or achieving some desired result. E.g. software development process, project management process, configuration management process. (2001-06-16)